Apple reportedly pressured Vine to go “17+” on the App Store

Vine failed to get a handle on the porn videos cropping up.

Apple may have nudged Twitter into updating its new Vine app with a “17+” rating on the App Store due to salacious content, according to a report from AllThingsD.

Shortly after Vine first appeared in the App Store, porn videos began cropping up not only under relevant hashtags (#sex, #nsfw, #pornvine) but as editors’ picks forced to the top of uninterested users’ feeds. Vine failed to get a quick handle on its mature content, and despite Apple cutting Twitter some slack for this, Apple felt it had no choice but to push Twitter to brand the app with a high maturity rating, according to AllThingsD.

Twitter was reportedly reminded by Apple of a certain clause in the App Store guidelines that reads “Developers are responsible for assigning appropriate ratings to their apps. Inappropriate ratings may be changed by Apple.” If the app didn’t up its rating, that duty would be performed by Apple’s invisible hand.

Since image- and video-sharing services are popular with teens, the new rating could strike a blow to Vine's growth (though all that it takes to bypass that barrier is an “OK” in a dialogue box, if the user has the App Store account password). The (alleged) move on Apple’s part shows that, even for a popular app formerly endorsed front and center in the App Store, the company will still act swiftly to keep adult content behind the curtain.

It's funny because when I asked a fellow I know about his iPhone 4, which was current at the time, he said, "Nah I really just use it for the porn". What's the difference between accessing porn from a browser vs an app in the appstore anyway?

Sure, you can access porn in Safari, but you also have the option of blocking Safari access through parental controls. The rating is appropriate given the content that is easily accessed through Vine, and simply gives parents the option to prevent their children from accessing the app, if desired.

Sure, you can access porn in Safari, but you also have the option of blocking Safari access through parental controls. The rating is appropriate given the content that is easily accessed through Vine, and simply gives parents the option to prevent their children from accessing the app, if desired.

Interesting. According to those articles, typing "#porn" should yield lots of porn. But when I search for the porn hashtag in the Vine app on my iPhone, it yields no results. It looks like Vine app is filtering out x-rated material. Nothing to freak out about.

Sure, you can access porn in Safari, but you also have the option of blocking Safari access through parental controls. The rating is appropriate given the content that is easily accessed through Vine, and simply gives parents the option to prevent their children from accessing the app, if desired.

In the App Store, yes, all browsers are automatically rated +17. Including Google's Chrome.

These apps may not contain inappropriate material, however they can readily be used to access such. An important distinction for parents.

I came here to say pretty much this. The issue is pretty much overblown, imho. Most photo gallery apps and many reference sources I could find are labeled at least 12+ with one of the reasons cited to be 'infrequent nudity' where anything that may conceivably be used to access 'frequent nudity' gets the 17+ rating.

These ratings are used for parental restrictions. For media the already has a rating system in place (movies and TV shows have several levels, whereas music only has the 'explicit' label) Apple uses that system but for apps, they've provided their own ratings system: 4+, 9+, 12+, and 17+. These ratings pretty much mean nothing unless the parental restrictions are utilized. Many Apple apps and some general features have individual control while 3rd party apps are toggled by the aforementioned rating tiers.

I'm sure that if Vine wanted to put restrictions on content and police it themselves they could probably get a 12+ rating but the main issue is that, by design (#hashtags) the pornographic material was easily discoverable and also highly publicized. I'm sure that if it became a trend to draw photo-realistic titties on rooftops and parking lots, then most maps apps supporting satellite imagery would get at least a 12+, if not a 17+, dependent on frequency.

What I do find kind of weird though, is that Snapchat is only 12+. I've never used that app but it was my impression that it is/was used largely for people to send this type of material to each other.

Inappropriate ratings may be changed by Apple”. If the app didn’t up its rating, that duty would be performed by Apple’s invisible hand.

Okay, I guess it's my turn to be the Ars Pedant, but 'invisible hand' is usually used to refer, basically, to cause-and-effect in markets... countries that, say, issue too much debt for non-productive reasons will see their standards of living decline. It refers to sort of an impersonal web of effects that force corrective action when things get out of balance.

In this case, the hand is pretty darn visible. You might not see it, but it is a genuine, corporeal hand, belonging to some Apple employee typing and clicking somewhere. There's nothing impersonal about it, it's a direct decision by a single entity.

It's unclear to me from all the articles I've seen on Vine and 500px... are people (especially in the US) conflating nudity with "porn"?

To US users, I believe they are indeed one and the same as far as censorship goes, which explains why they will authorize all sorts of hate talk in the name of free speech but will censor countless works of arts in an instant if they happen to contain the hint of a nipple (never mind actual genitals).

It's unclear to me from all the articles I've seen on Vine and 500px... are people (especially in the US) conflating nudity with "porn"?

To US users, I believe they are indeed one and the same as far as censorship goes, which explains why they will authorize all sorts of hate talk in the name of free speech but will censor countless works of arts in an instant if they happen to contain the hint of a nipple (never mind actual genitals).

To be fair I don't imagine there's a great deal of fine art being posted under #porn

It's unclear to me from all the articles I've seen on Vine and 500px... are people (especially in the US) conflating nudity with "porn"?

To US users, I believe they are indeed one and the same as far as censorship goes, which explains why they will authorize all sorts of hate talk in the name of free speech but will censor countless works of arts in an instant if they happen to contain the hint of a nipple (never mind actual genitals).

To be fair I don't imagine there's a great deal of fine art being posted under #porn

True, but imho there needs to be a finer scale, like separating erotic material from actual porn.

No doubt once Vine gets proper filtering in place, they will drop the 17+ rating.

Also, Apple doesn't enforce 17+ for web browsers, Chrome was 4+ for months, until too many people complained on Chrome's bug tracker that they couldn't block it with parental controls (it's common to allow your kids to install any free app/game so long as the rating is OK).

I remain mystified by the U.S.'s (and other highly religious country's) attitude toward exposing children to sex. I'm not suggesting parents shouldn't be able to restrict their children's access to explicit material; I'm just interested in the reason they'd wish to. I guess it's mostly because major religions claim their deity doesn't want people to have sex until after they're relationship has been sanctified through marriage. I can certainly understand Apple's business decision to cater to this attitude.